We left Quito on Tuesday afternoon.
After completing all the necessary close of service paperwork and tears at the Peace Corps office, we took a cab to the Supermaxi in Cumbayá. It cost us about $6.00 more than public transit would have, but we didn´t want to shlep all of our bags onto two buses to get to the Rio Coca Terminal, where buses to Cumbayá leave every two minutes.
When we arrived at the bus stop in Cumbayá, there was a bus leaving for Coca. We hustled up to see if there were seats. The ayudante (assistant) said there weren´t.
Ten minutes later a bus heading to Tena pulled up. Tena is about five hours from Quito in bus and is a city I know relatively well having visited there several times. An hour outside of Tena is the intersection that separates the road to Coca from the road to Tena (Km. 24 via Hollin-Loreto).
We hopped on the bus the bus heading toward Tena and weighed our options. There are buses leaving Tena every hour and half for Coca, and all these buses pass that intersection. We could have gotten off at the intersection and picked up the next bus to Coca. If we had done this we would have arrived in Coca at around 10:00 p.m.
Coca has a relatively shady reputation among Ecuadorians. I was talking to a friend the other days who said he has heard more stories of people getting robbed in Coca than fingers on his hands. He also said that most of those stories started with "I was drinking in Coca...," but the point remains the same. The only reason that Coca emerged as a major city is the oil industry.
I called the boat company in Coca and learned there was no benefit to arriving in Coca early Wednesday morning or Wednesday afternoon because the boat left early Thursday morning and there was no need to book your ticket ahead of time.
Given the available information and my previously comfort level with Tena, we decided to take the bus all the way to Tena ($6) and head out on a bus to Coca early Wednesday morning.
We stayed a Hostal Austria in Tena ($11 /person) and had hoped to use the evening to catch up on email and eat burritos. Unfortunately, there was an unexpected power outage, so we couldn't do anything but sit in our hotel room under candlelight.
We took a bus the next morning to Coca ($7) and got into town a little afternoon. Having not spent any money on dinner the night before, we decided to treat ourselves to maito for lunch. Maito is a delicacy of the Ecuadoian Amazon. It is also known as ayampaco. If you want to learn how to make them, check out this YouTube video I made.
1 comment:
It is not a good idea to be a cheap skate when it comes to buying screws for your hardwood deck.
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